I have made a decision to alter and/or remove various restrictions on Voat. I’ve thought a lot about this and it’s something both @Atko and I believe needs to be reevaluated.

Voat has always had a problem with spam. @Amalek would spam posts and hijack the new queue making it unusable. MH101 and then later @SaneGoatiSwear would hijack comment pages making them unusable. The rules Voat uses were put in place in to combat this behavior. They are old rules, mostly remaining unchanged from the initial versions of this site. Most, if not all, of the rules were in direct response to spam attacks. It was never Voat’s intention to limit non-spam accounts, but this is what has happened as an indirect result of these rules.

Voat will not keep in place a system that permanently limits a segment of users from debating and conversing. This isn’t Free Speech as I see it or as I want it.

Voat will shortly be going live with a new code base, and I want to have a new system designed and ready for when this happens, so I am posting this announcement to get feedback from the community.

At the moment all CCP restrictions do to prevent spam is stop comment/post flooding by unpopular users. The sensible alternative is to make rules that directly prevent flooding. You can look through the data and see the frequency distribution of users' daily posts/comments - this is a good reference point. (At the moment low-CCP users are limited based on a 24-hour window, I think moving to a 48 hour window would be less of an inconvenience for genuine users - what follows doesn't depend on the window chosen.) Take for example the 98th (or xth) percentile relative to the frequency distribution above and set this as a global comment/post limit for all established users regardless of CCP score. Nobody can comment/post more than this within the chosen 24/48 hour time period. Apart from this fixed limit, let users post/comment without captchas until they get to say 80% (of whatever you want) of the maximum, introduce captchas for posts/comments from 80-95% of the maximum, double the necessary captchas for 95-100% of the maximum. This should kill flooding by individual accounts while only inconveniencing a few genuine users. Users who regularly hit 100% of their limits despite the apparent inconvenience of captchas would be red flags for administrators to investigate further.

I also consider the ability to upvote/downvote as an important aspect of free-speech, and think they should also be subject to universal limits for established users similar to the above.

In my opinion, discriminating against users who are not 'established' on voat is not an infringement of free speech so long as becoming 'established' has nothing to do with the popularity of users' ideas. Clearly CCP is a terrible measure of a user's patronage or sincerity. I suggest a new measure whereby a user becomes established when they have accrued 50 (or whatever) days when they logged in, voted on something, and commented/posted at least once. This may be overly harsh towards lurkers, so perhaps just logging in and voting is enough, though this has greater 'security' risks for voat regarding establishing the reputation of a user and guarding against some manner of hostile takeover by newbies. I also think such an establishment score should be degraded steadily if a user is inactive for more than two weeks (or whatever). This acts as a measure against sleeper accounts. Something like 25% (or whatever) of established users' commenting/posting/voting limits for newbies might be appropriate.

I don't view the ordering of content via up/downvotes or the mere act of reporting a CCP score as real impediments to free speech, especially when we have the option to order from the 'bottom' as well as the top. This type of user control of how they view content could be expanded: firstly by giving a 'Bottom' ordering for posts that complements 'Top' by swapping the role of up and downvotes. Various 'Middle' type orderings could also be introduced for comments and posts.

I am against increasing moderator powers - most people accept that this path is easily subject to subversion. The ideal is to have the site owners/PuttItOut doing the vast majority of moderation algorithmically.

When it comes to preventing intelligent subversion, CCP restrictions are useless. People or organizations are free to open as many accounts as they like, and many smart professional operators who wish to steer apparent opinions on voat are not dumb enough to draw attention to themselves by posting commenting too frequently from single accounts. CCP restrictions are also easily gamed by saying whatever voat wants to hear, posing no impediment all even to isolated individuals whose goal is subversion. I cannot think of any way at all to counter professional subversion while preserving user anonymity. I see this as an unsolvable problem unrelated to voat upholding free speech for its users.

The exact details of spam rules may reasonably be subject to secrecy. However, I think CCP-restrictions have little to do with spam, and are instead related to free-speech. Whatever rules you decide on regarding user-limits on commenting/posting/voting should be made painfully obvious to all new users, preferably before they open an account.

Smallpond isn't here to merely voice opinions. He is here to disrupt and even shut down Voat if possible. He is an enemy of free speech. He is worse than mere spammers who are here trying to make a few bucks using deceptive practices.

He is deceptively claiming to be a victim of anti-free speech policies, when in reality he is here to disrupt and end the free speech of everyone on Voat.

Neither spammers nor people who are here to destroy Voat deserve any special consideration. His restrictions should continue, until he starts doing something seen as constructive or useful by other Voaters.

Smallpond has never once done anything positive for Voat or free speech in general.

Disclaimer: If we’re conversing, I will soon fall silent. I may want to continue, but because my views are unpopular here I have less than 100 CCP, and am temporarily banned as soon as I make 10 comments in a day. Voat does not respect free speech. Don’t be a hypocrite and pretend that it does.

Now I remember that fucking irritating disclaimer on almost every comment he made while whining about that "censorship" crap over and over again.

Most people have no doubt that I'm a legitimate user. My disclaimer 'whines' about free speech - for over four months now I've been using most of my less than 10 comments per day trying to highlight exactly what this post is addressing as a serious problem. PuttItOut himself didn't complain about the disclaimer when replying to a recent comment of mine. Here is the disclaimer for reference, though I've edited it recently to acknowledge PuttItOut's stated intentions to improve things:

Disclaimer: If we’re conversing, I will soon fall silent. I may want to continue, but because my views are unpopular here I have less than 100 CCP, and am temporarily banned as soon as I make 10 comments in a day. Voat does not respect free speech. Don’t be a hypocrite and pretend that it does.

You on the other hand have been a consistent and staunch critic of free speech in this regard and continue to support ongoing censorship even in this thread. Unable to deter me with your usual bullying and shallow, insincere arguments you even became desperate enough to promote ridiculous lies about me that of course you've been unable to support with any manner of proof. Of all users, I think you're the prime suspect regarding subversion of voat actually being aided by exploitation of CCP restrictions - still think Israel would gladly employ you if they haven't already. I've seen you openly express the sentiment that winning is all that matters more than once - you view principles (whether they be intellectual or moral) as weaknesses: hence you have no credibility and cannot be trusted.